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Post by erik on Mar 16, 2023 22:45:15 GMT -5
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Post by RobGNYC on Mar 19, 2023 19:46:49 GMT -5
From the Jim Gordon NY Times obit. I didn't know the Rita story.
"The credit for writing “Layla” went to Mr. Clapton and Mr. Gordon, but its instrumental second movement, called the “Piano Exit,” was composed by Mr. Gordon and the singer Rita Coolidge, his girlfriend at the time. As she recalled in her autobiography, “Delta Lady” (2016, with Michael Walker), Mr. Gordon created a melody, to which she responded with a countermelody “that answered and resolved the tension of Jim’s chords and built to a dramatic crescendo. Mr. Gordon and Ms. Coolidge made a cassette demo of what they intended to be a separate song and gave it to Mr. Clapton. Ms. Coolidge did not know what became of it until she heard “Layla” on the radio and learned that she had received no credit. She was infuriated. “What they’d clearly done,” she wrote, “was take the song Jim and I had written, jettisoned the lyrics, and tacked it on to the end of Eric’s song.” When Mr. Clapton released the album “Unplugged” in 1992, his acoustic version of “Layla” peaked at No. 12 on the Billboard Hot 100. When “Layla” received the Grammy Award for best rock song the next year, Mr. Clapton and Mr. Gordon shared the award as songwriters, but Ms. Coolidge’s role received no acknowledgment."
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